Opening statements...
"It was a great win for our team. Niagara, as you can see, is very worthy of the hype that they have. They were 49 in the RPI last year and returned four starters and five seniors. They averaged 22 wins in the past three years and been in the postseason in two of the last three.
They are a very difficult team to play against. They played very small.

They're very quick. They can shoot from a lot of different spots and they're very unique. We typically don*t see that but they reminded me of a team that we had last year. They're a very well coached team, but I'm very proud of the way we competed. I think we were down seven late in the game and we did a good job at the foul line, hitting 25-of-30 for 83 percent. We did some things poorly and made some mistakes. We didn't recognize and get the ball inside like I would*ve like, but we couldn*t play our two big guys at the same time in the game because they were so small. (Bilal) Benn is a terrific player. He hurt us in an undersized four-man. They have some good Big East transfers on that court from high-level Big East programs. Benn is from Villanova and (Rob) Garrison is a UConn transfer, I think. They had some very good point guards. I*m proud of DeWayne (Reed). He made some big plays and that*s what you would expect from your senior, coming down the stretch. He made a huge play in the paint to put us ahead.

On Lucas Hargrove's block at the end of the game...
"It was big. He was horrendous, I thought, for the whole game. That wasn't his best game by any stretch of the imagination. We need him to play better. He got to two fouls and took him out of the game. In the first half, he never really got into a flow in the game. Then he tried to press a little bit and do things that were out of his character and he needs to stay in character. We didn't get much out of him.
Obviously, we played some freshmen out there and they had some major minutes. Without Tay (Waller) in there, I thought they did a pretty decent job for freshmen in a big game like that."

On scoring droughts in the game...
"It's frustrating. They defended our ball screens differently, they switched everything. We had to be small and we didn*t counter the switching of the ball screens particularly well. Our ball screen offense wasn*t great and we didn*t get the ball inside like we would*ve liked. We didn*t get a lot of easy buckets, but they are a good, tough defensive team. I thought our ball screen offense was pretty good. We got it into the paint off the bounce with our guards off the ball screens. Typically when you look, the team that gets to the line the most is the team that wins ball games, you like to see your team get to the line 30 times."

On Tay Waller's status...
"I don't know right now. It's been nagging for him for a
while."

On whether or not the team has worked on late-game situations...
"Not a whole lot, not like we had tonight. We had funky lineups out there. They went very small, so we went really small. We're used to playing small at four positions, not at five positions with this year's team. They went small at five positions so we had some lineups on the court sometimes that you probably may not see for the rest of the year. We haven*t spend a lot of time working on that."

Niagara Head Coach Joe Mihalich

Opening statement...
"I'm really proud of my team. We had a Southeast Conference team beat in their gym. We had them beat. A couple plays down the stretch didn't go our way. We are really proud of our team."

On the play of Anthony Nelson...
"He's a warrior, he's a winner, and he's a champion. He deserved to win tonight. We're hurting in there. All those guys, they deserved to win."

On rebounding from a tough loss...
"Good teams deal with this. Good teams take a loss and find a way to make themselves better. That's what those guys will do."

On the seniors taking over...
"I wanted to step up and carry our team. We didn*t have Tay Waller, so I had to pick up his slack. We had to put it together and come up with the win."

On big free throws down the stretch...
"I mean it's big. I'm confident in going to the line and putting the free throws in. I was just hungry and ready to win the whole game."

On his steal at the end of the game...
"Coach wanted me to jump to the ball. I knew he was going to drive because there were only a few seconds on the clock. I got into help side, and I put my hands up and the ball was there. I took it to the other end.*

On if it was a good win for the team...
"I was happy. Without Tay it is hard because other people key on him.
I value him on my team, so, it makes it really hard."

On Andre Malone's play...
"Andre played very well. All the freshman came in and played
well."